Trucks carrying aid move, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri

Hamas mouthpiece Felesteen recently featured an article about how Gazans should fulfill the obligation of zakat (charity), during this year’s Ramadan holiday.

In the article, questions were asked to the Mufti of Khan Younis, Sheikh Muhammad Ihsan Ashour.

There are questions about whether one may transfer money to the recipient’s bank account where they would have to pay high fees to withdraw it, or whether a widow who receives vouchers to get goods for her children can use them to help her mother.

This one opinion from Ashour is noteworthy (translation courtesy of Google Translate and Grok AI translation):

Sheikh Ashour pointed out that it is not permissible for the zakat payer to purchase food parcels for the poor from his zakat money, lest the poor person be forced to sell the food parcels for a low price or throw them out into the streets due to their large number among the people, as we saw previously.

He seems to be saying that there has been so much food aid in Gaza that poor people didn’t know what to do with it all, so they either threw the aid into the streets or they sold them for next to no money since no one needed it. The article specifically references the 2025 Ramadan holiday, though there is no explicit mention of the time period when food was thrown out.

Still, this is the advice being given in 2025.

A famine zone would not have this problem — which raises serious questions about how many in the media could continue to claim that a famine is even close to happening.